The Perils of Texting While President

In this June 3, 2010 file photo, President Barack Obama uses his BlackBerry e-mail device

By Gautham Nagesh and Siobhan Gorman

WASHINGTON — Reports that U.S. intelligence agencies may have monitored the personal cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have roiled Berlin, but security experts in Washington are barely batting an eye.

Experts contacted by the Journal agreed that the vulnerability of mobile devices makes them ripe targets for hackers and foreign spies, who wouldn’t need the cooperation of a user’s wireless provider to eavesdrop on their calls.

Associated Press

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center, types a text message on her cell phone as she visits the Cebit tech fair in Hanover, northern Germany, Tuesday, March 1, 2011.

“Personal cellphones can’t be secured. Or it’s exceptionally difficult to secure them. Particularly if you’re using some European cellphones, which are designed to be hackable,” said James Lewis, a former State Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“I’m not surprised at all. These devices have significant security vulnerabilities, and ironically the more recent devices tend to have more security flaws,” added Ed Skoudis, an instructor at the SANS Institute, a cyber-security training firm.

Mr. Lewis said mobile devices are particularly vulnerable to hacking because they send signals through the air, which can be intercepted, and feature operating systems with varying levels of security. In addition, he said European cell networks are specifically designed to be hackable in cooperation with European security services.

“A cellphone is innately insecure,” Mr. Lewis said.

Mr. Skoudis said there are multiple ways a hacker could take over a cellphone, none of which require physical access or cooperation from the wireless provider. By sending a text message, email, or inducing a user to visit a Web page, a hacker could install malware that would allow them to control the phone remotely. NSA is known to have injected spy software into phones via text message, a process capable of capturing communications from a phone before they are encrypted.

“Provider cooperation would help tremendously, but I don’t think they needed it,” Mr. Skoudis said.

Once the malware is installed, the hacker would then be able to eavesdrop on the user’s calls, track their location, control the camera, and any other feature or sensor included on the phone.

“Really if you think about it, these mobile devices are kind of the ultimate spying machines once they come under control of someone else,” Mr. Skoudis said. “Pretty much the sky’s the limit when it comes to these devices.”

Mr. Lewis said phone hacking is easy enough that hackers must be selective about who they target, since there is little to gain from average users. But he said heads of state like Ms. Merkel represent high-value targets that could be vulnerable to spying from a wide range of parties.

Mr. Lewis said “it doesn’t make sense” for Mrs. Merkel and President Obama, perhaps the most famous BlackBerry user, to continue carrying their own cellphones.

“Merkel should be upset, because if the Americans did do it, that means the Chinese could do it, the Russians, and several other countries,” Mr. Lewis said. “If you’re using a vulnerable device, people are going to pile onto it.”

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